


Pitch Black, Pale Blue

by SouthernBird



Series: Shance Week 2016 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Final Battle, First Glance, Implied Death, Last Kiss, Last Touch, M/M, Romantic Angst, Shance Week 2016: First Glance/Last Touch, shance, with brief implicatons of Battle Scars/Insecurity Prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 10:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8620810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: Written for Shance Week 2016! Day 7 - First Glance/Last Touch (with bits of Day 3 - Confidence/Insecurity and Day 5 - Battle Scars)





	

The first of many glances occurs after Shiro stirs awake on a makeshift cot, far away from the Garrison’s cold examination table. For a brief second, dark gray eyes finding blue ones sheepishly after gathering some clothes and easing exhaustedly into a small lavatory. It’s privacy he wants to afford himself, especially after being put under by people he thought he could trust.

At first, other than Keith, these strangers created a tension in Shiro’s back that stiffened his shoulders and make his stomach churn. They aren’t the Galra, by no means, far from it, and he tells himself in the dimly lit bathroom as the water runs, _he’s safe.  
_

However, safety is only a threadbare thought as his imagination runs wild more and more because Shiro _knows_ why he escaped, and knows what the Galra are capable of, but there is nothing else but personal nightmares. The edges are blurred, fuzzy, as if playing on monochromatic vintage film reels—why can’t he _remember?_ Everything shifts in a jumbled mess of a headspace, pitch blacks and pale blues and horrific _red_ , so much _red._

His eyes trail down his face—his jaw looks sharper, eyes older—than he remembers before sinking down to watch the water drain down the sink, Shiro wondering how hard it would be to drain away into emptiness, too.

Fresh air is a cure for the hidden ailments that rattle in his core, he finds. Venturing outside, he hopes to find a sense of self out in the desert, out in the expanse of fresh air so different from the controlled environment of alien ships; the oxygen, the nitrogen, every gaseous molecule fills his lungs and steadies him. He’s home, after all, and he should enjoy the moment of salvation as long as he can.

However, his solitude is interrupted with a hand on his shoulder and a sad look from one of his dearest friends. Keith, Shiro regrettably notices, looks older, too, more cynical and wary, all frown lines creases on such a young face. It makes the erratic mess of memories and what ifs louder, more incoherent. Everything, really, is scrambled.

Later, inside, it’s a discussion of war machines and energy pulses, something about a Blue Lion and some crazy idea that Shiro’s escape was _predicted_ eons ago.

Most importantly, and the first of many touches and words interchanged, comes with Shiro offers his hand with a smile, a simple question of Lance, right?” and then it’s seeing that hesitant, yet assuring smile, and a hand cradled in chilled grip of his metal hand. Blue eyes, so incredibly and breathtaking blue, search into his, as if this too was fated.

-

Blue eyes, deep as oceans, bright as sapphires, haunt Shiro in every way after that.

Shiro finds himself enchanted, absolutely lost in the wake of blue gazes and smiles (that sometimes, painfully, never reach those eyes). For years, it becomes a worrisome affair, the elder of the team trying to decipher the little clues Lance’s face gives away, reveals with such unknowing precision that Shiro’s work in discovering the Blue Paladin in every way becomes more of an occupation than a past time.

It’s later when Shiro’s eyes begin to show signs of crow’s feet that his own romantic endeavors prove fruitful, able to ask with a whisper of a chance, “may I kiss you?” The words echo in the cold chamber of the observatory, just the two of them awake at such an ungodly—though time becomes something environmentally controlled then too, out in deep space—hour. After all this time, after countless battles and training maneuvers, Shiro then knows what helplessness looks like, and it’s all evident in wide eyes, stunted breath, and a quivering bottom lip.

Every moment Lance hesitates, it’s a tick off of Shiro’s lifespan, his heart sinking with every breath that never abates the writhing, turbulent fear that… Lance didn’t care for him back.

He is proven wrong, and their first kiss is a heaven sent brilliance, ebbs and flows of heat and of relief, of the sheer audacity that their lips are touching, together, the first of so many. The very act itself leaves Shiro sleepless, still grinning like a schoolboy all during his supposed sleep cycle.

Then, as with all matters that are meant to collide, meant to interweave and become something far greater than simply two beings, Shiro finds himself so incredibly fond of soft, warm lips along his own thinner ones, fond of how he craves to cup his hands along the perfect curvature of hip bones when he’s making love to Lance, fond of the quiet, intimate whispers as much as he relishes boundless laughter.

But maybe then it’s those secretive moments, the times when they bask in the after glow, wrapped around each other, Shiro’s musculature quivering in the cooling air of their room that he is most fond of. The heat, the core of molten _need_ is on the verge of cool down, having been sated with moans and needy pleads. Laying on their rumpled, dirtied sheets, Shiro lays there, no longer the Black Paladin and leader of Voltron, but rather just himself, cradling his sated lover against his side.

On darker nights, Lance hides briefly in the wake of realization that his body, tall and lithe, more sinew and curve than Shiro’s broad, taller stance, may not be acceptable, may not truly make Shiro’s pants a little too tight whenever sun-loved skin is revealed from beneath layers of clothes or armor, may not make his lover’s heart palpitations increase with vigor. Even after being _worshipped_ from the top of his head to his feet, Lance still has the biting bile of dark thoughts, the ones that permeate and create a cold sense of self that breaks Shiro’s heart to see.

It’s those times that Shiro, tender and kind, more so than he already strived to be for Lance, for his Blue Paladin, his heart and the heart of the team, searches for the will to roll their bodies flush. His ‘old age’ as the younger Paladins so affectionately call it forces Shiro to have to dig deep for the will for a second arousal, but he makes it so every time and they make love until Lance is crying from how beautiful Shiro makes him feel.

(It’s always likewise on the days Shiro’s stump of an arm hurts in ways he cannot explain in the confines of Galran metalsmithing, in the clutches of dark magic that hisses awful could-be realities as Lance lays an comforting kiss on the Black Paladin’s right shoulder to quell the ache.)

Their time together, whether burdened with a war that becomes their own or heavy with the insecurities of their own self image, their own trials and trauma, is still a time when Shiro could say he was was so incredibly happy. The future seems so assured despite the risks all at stake, despite that one day, Lance may be gone, or he may leave Lance due to desolation so outside of Shiro’s own fierce determination.

It’s a reality that is as sure as the sun rising on Earth lightyears away; it’s simply a matter of _how_ and _when_ that becomes the most troublesome part of it all.  

-

Last touches are always those that are concealed until they are truly known as the last.

For Shiro, it’s clinging to Lance in the hangar of the Black Lion, it’s kissing his lips, his cheeks, and his neck, leaving love marks so dark that no being in the universe would ever _dare_ to presume that Lance belonged to anyone else. Lance mewls for him, hands desperately clinging to Shiro’s strong shoulders, the same shoulders that have carried worlds, carried the monstrosities of his sins, as if Lance with those _damn blue_ eyes are pleading _let me carry the weight with you._

“Shiro…” is the most sad, broken whisper the man in question has ever had the misfortune to hear as Princess Allura speaks to them over the com system, reiterates as she has in these past weeks that this is it; the events about to unfold are the quest of a final battle, a final conflict between the alliances of Altea and Voltron versus the powerful Galran Empire.

Tears brim along eyes so luminous that the elder’s heart stops as it did when their hands first touched in Keith’s humble shack in what seems like decades ago.  

It’s with an equally sad, yet firm voice that Shiro speaks, answers his lover with the best of his courage that any man about to possibly face his Maker can derive, “after this, we’re going home, kitten.”

Shiro thumbs along a scar along Lances bottom lip, a force he undertook during a prior mission in anticipation for this long awkward conclusion. Lance simply smiles, eyes not reflecting the shift of his lips, as his own hand rises to trail fingertips along the scar across Shiro’s sharp face.

“Going home… to a little place on the beach, yeah?” the question lingers with the most miniscule of hope, hanging in the air like a dying carcass. A little place on the beach to watch sunrises and sunsets, to couple together as one flesh in rhythm with waves and storms, to gaze upon the peaches, purples, and blues of an ever-changing sky. It was all they seemed to speak of lately, as if they gave the dream such vibrant life that it could be _real._

“Any beach you want, so long as it’s just for two.”  

Lance simply smiles, trails fingertips along Shiro’s jaw down to over his heart where his hand lingers. The smile turns into a bitter sight, as though this is all someone’s fault, but Lance has no one to blame.

Maybe Lance blames himself for all of this; it breaks Shiro’s heart to even fathom such atrocities.

He never gets to soothe the guilt, not even permitted to speak as the next seconds are a blur, one last kiss chastely, yet so lovingly given, before Lance shifts away, hesitant and melancholy.

The last thing Shiro sees before Lance’s departure are eyes askance towards him, so _worried,_ so _downtrodden._

It takes every ounce of discipline instilled in Shiro after years of the Garrison, after a year as a Champion under the regime he hopes to destroy on this day, to keep his joints locked, to keep him from rushing after. In the silence of the hangar, he _prays_ , begs, so raw and open as he pleads to whoever will listen, keep Lance close, _save him,_ save them, someone keep them, someone allow them all, every one of them, to truly and happily go _home_ to pale blues of skylines so pure and of oceans so abyssal, sails along horizon lines and summer thunderstorms.

But victory is hollow– a war fought hard and won—as in place of jovial trumpets and of stars dazzling in the wake of triumph, it’s shattered bones, burned flesh, and warped shrapnel of metal that instead makes an idea of a happy home on a beach all the more a pitch black nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> "Pitch Black, Pale Blue" comes from 'Neptune' by Sleeping at Last.


End file.
